Last week the Supreme Court heard a couple of different cases concerning gay marriage. As a result a lot of my Facebook friends changed their profile pictures to reflect their support for equal rights when it comes to marriage. I saw a few (very few) people make statements or post their own images reflecting their own support of “traditional” marriage. While different from my own opinion, these people are certainly entitled to their own beliefs and outlooks. After all, that’s why living in America is so great. We can have differences of opinions. Most of the time my friends do this in a polite and respectful manner. If they don’t then they are simply no longer a friend.
But I would like to share with you why I, a heterosexual, mature woman, who was brought up in a church going home now fully and totally embrace the idea that someone who’s sexual preference is different than my own has the absolute right to fall in love with the person of their choosing. Why I think that once that happens they should be able to legally marry and have the exact same rights that I do as a woman married to a man. There should be no need for extra paper work.
Growing up in Fort Worth, I did not know one single person that was homosexual. We had two women who lived up the street from us that were probably lesbians. I’m just assuming that they were. But I never heard my parents say anything. Looking back, when I started high school there were definitely guys and girls that were gay. I don’t know what their life was like. I have friends that have talked to me about some of the emotional things they went through back then. But I basically just happily grew up in my happy little home, in my content little bubble.
Then a cousin came into our family. I was about 25 and he was probably about 3. He was very different from any other boy child I had every dealt with. Watching him play and interact with other children, I knew he would be gay. There were a lot of things that pointed in that direction. Most of them are stereotypes. There’s no reason to perpetuate those. So let me just say no child was as happy as this child was when he received his very own Jasmine Disney doll.
But that child led me to question some of the things that I had been taught. When I say taught, I couldn’t even tell you how I was “taught”. We never discussed being gay in my home. I don’t remember hearing a sermon or talking about this in Sunday School. But somehow, I knew that according to the Bible that this “behavior” was wrong. It was a sin.
I like to consider myself a logical person. In my Christian home, sins were choices we made. You steal the candy rather than pay for it. It didn’t make sense to me that this child was sinning because he was gay. He didn’t choose to be different. He didn’t wake up one morning when he was an adult and think “I’ll be gay.” He was in the words of Lady GaGa “Born this way.”
If you believe in Jesus and if this child was born this way, doesn’t that mean he is exactly the way god intended him to be? If you truly believe that homosexuality is a sin, then don’t allow them to be married in your church. But they certainly deserve the same process as everyone else. Wasn’t there a time that divorce was considered sinful. Yet now divorced individuals are allowed to marry and in some case even hold offices of power in the church. Wasn’t there a time that inter racial marriage was considered taboo?
Like Republican Senator Rob Portman, I guess Christians clinging to their long lists of “thou shall and thou shalt not” won’t change their mind until they see a LGBT child, grandchild, or cousin of their own sitting in the floor happily being themselves.
I hope in the coming months to see something similar to this —–> http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0388_0001_ZO.html
http://www.upworthy.com//the-top-8-ways-to-be-traditionally-married-according-to-the-bible?c=upw1